George Martin - Fevre Dream

As the Fevre Dream steamed out of Natchez, Marsh was only beginning to mull over the story he had gotten from Joshua York. The more he mulled, the more he fretted. If you could credit it, Joshua’s outlandish story about hunting for vampires did explain a respectable amount of the strange goings-on that had plagued the Fevre Dream. But it didn’t explain everything. Abner Marsh’s slow, but tenacious, memory kept throwing up questions and recollections that floated around in his head like dead wood floats on the river, good for nothing, but bothersome.

Simon, f’rinstance, licking up mosquitoes.

Joshua’s extraordinary night vision.

And most of all, the way he’d raged the day Marsh had come barging into his cabin. He hadn’t come outside neither, to see them run against the Southerner. That worried Marsh considerably. It was fine for Joshua to say he kept night hours on account of these vampires of his, but that still didn’t explain the way he’d acted that afternoon. Most folks Abner Marsh knew kept normal daylight hours, but that didn’t mean they wouldn’t hoist themselves out of bed at three in the morning if there was something interesting to gawk at.

Marsh badly felt the need to talk it over with someone. Jonathan Jeffers was a demon for book learning, and Karl Framm probably knew every damn fool story that had ever been told along the damn fool river; either of ’em would likely know everything there was to know about these vampires. Only he couldn’t talk to them. He’d promised Joshua, and he was beholden to the man, and wasn’t about to go and betray him a second time. Not without cause, anyway, and all he had were half-formed suspicions.

The suspicions got more formed every day, though, as the Fevre Dream loafed down the Mississippi. Generally they ran by day now, and tied up at twilight, then set out again the next morning. They made better time than they had before Natchez, which heartened Marsh. Other changes pleased him less.

Marsh did not cotton to Joshua’s new friends; he decided in short order that they were every bit as queer as Joshua’s old friends, keeping the same night hours and all. Raymond Ortega struck Marsh as a restless, untrustworthy sort. The man wouldn’t keep to passenger territory, and kept turning up in places he didn’t belong. He was polite enough in a haughty, indolent fashion, but Marsh got a chill off him.

Valerie was warmer but almost as disturbing, with her soft words and provocative smiles and those eyes of hers. She didn’t act like Raymond Ortega’s fiancee at all. Right from the first, she was real friendly with Joshua. Too damned friendly, if you asked Marsh. It was bound to cause trouble. A proper lady would have stayed to the ladies’ cabin, but Valerie spent her nights with Joshua in the grand saloon, and sometimes took walks on the deck with him. Marsh even heard one man say that they’d gone up to Joshua’s cabin together. He tried to warn York about the kind of scandalous talk that was starting up, but Joshua just shrugged it off. “Let them have their scandal, Abner, if it pleases them,” he said. “Valerie is interested in our boat, and it is my pleasure to show it to her. There is nothing between us but friendship, you have my word.” He looked almost sad when he said that. “I might wish that it were otherwise, but that is the truth.”

“You better be goddamned careful what you’re wishin’,” Marsh said bluntly. “That Ortega might have his own opinions on the matter. He’s from New Orleans, probably one of those Creoles. They’ll fight a duel over just about any damn thing, Joshua.”

Joshua York smiled. “I have no fear of Raymond, but I thank you for your warning, Abner. Now, please, let Valerie and me conduct our own affairs.”

Marsh did just that, but not comfortably. He was certain that Ortega would make trouble sooner or later, especially when Valerie Mersault went on to become Joshua’s constant companion during the nights that followed. The goddamned woman was blinding him to the dangers all about him, but there wasn’t a thing Marsh could do about it.

And that was only the start of it. At each landing, more strangers came aboard, and Joshua always gave them cabins. At Bayou Sara, he and Valerie left the Fevre Dream one night and returned with a pale, heavy man named Jean Ardant. A few minutes downriver, they’d put in at a woodyard, and Ardant had gone and fetched this sallow-faced dandy named Vincent. At Baton Rouge, four more strangers had taken passage; at Donaldsonville another three.

And then there were those dinners. As his strange company began to grow, Joshua York ordered a table set up in the texas parlor, and there he would dine at midnight with his companions, new and old. Supper they took with everyone else in the main cabin, but these dinners were private. The custom started in Bayou Sara. Abner Marsh allowed once to Joshua how the idea of a regular meal at midnight took his fancy, but that didn’t get him invited. Joshua only smiled, and the meals went on, the number of diners growing each night. Finally Marsh’s curiosity got the better of him, and he managed to walk by the parlor a couple of times to glance in the window. There wasn’t much to see. Just some folks eating and talking. The oil lamps were dim and subdued, the curtains half-drawn. Joshua sat at the head of the table, Simon on his right-hand side and Valerie to his left. Everybody was sipping from glasses of Joshua’s vile elixir, several bottles of which had been uncorked. The first time Marsh wandered by, Joshua was talking animatedly and the rest were listening. Valerie stared at him almost worshipfully. The second time Marsh peeked in, Joshua was listening to Jean Ardant, one hand resting casually on the tablecloth. As Marsh watched, Valerie placed her own hand on top of it. Joshua glanced at her and smiled fondly. Valerie smiled back. Abner Marsh looked quickly for Raymond Ortega, muttered “Goddamn fool woman” under his breath, and hurried away, scowling.

Marsh tried to make sense of it, of all these queer strangers, these odd goings-on, of all Joshua York had told him about vampires. It wasn’t easy, and the more he thought on it the more confused he got. The library on the Fevre Dream had no books about vampires or anything like that and he wasn’t about to go stealing into Joshua’s cabin again. At Baton Rouge, he took himself into town and bought a few rounds at some likely grog shops, hoping to find out something that way. When he could, he’d introduce the subject of vampires into the talk, usually by turning to his drinking companions and saying, “Say, you ever heard anything ’bout vampires along the river?” He figured that was safer than raising the subject on the steamer, where the very word might start some bad talk.

A few folks laughed at him or gave him odd looks. One free man of color, a burly soot-black fellow with a broken nose whom Marsh accosted in a particularly smoky tavern, ran off as soon as Marsh asked his question. Marsh tried to run after him, but was soon left behind wheezing. Others seemed to know considerable about vampires, though none of the stories had a damn thing to do with the Mississippi. All the stuff he’d heard from Joshua’s lips, about crosses and garlic and coffins full of dirt, he heard repeated, and more besides.

Marsh took to watching York and his companions closely at supper, and afterward in the grand saloon. Vampires didn’t eat nor drink, he’d been told, but Joshua and the others drank copious amounts of wine and whiskey and brandy when they weren’t sipping York’s private stock, and all of them were only too glad to do justice to a nice chicken or pork chop.

Joshua was always wearing his silver ring, with its sapphire big as a pigeon’s eye, and none of them seemed bothered by all the silver about the cabin. They used the silverware proper enough when they ate, better than most of the Fevre Dream ’s crew.